


Not A Hero Or Savior

by Estirose



Category: Starman (TV)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 15:15:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6157816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estirose/pseuds/Estirose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is only part of Dr. Ellen Dukow's day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not A Hero Or Savior

**Author's Note:**

> This is set somewhere in the 2010s, when Celiac Disease would be far more widely known by doctors and patients alike, and reading up is just a web search away. I've read stories of people who were diagnosed with the disease in earlier years, but I didn't think I could do a story set in the late 1980s/early 1990s justice.

Dr. Ellen Dukow looked at parents of a little girl that she'd just diagnosed. As incurable diseases went, at least this one was... well, it wasn't the worst diagnosis that the little girl could get. 

"She has Celiac Disease," she told the parents. "It's an autoimmune disease where the immune system attacks the lower intestine when she has any kind of gluten - wheat, rye, barley. That's why she's been having so many stomach problems and lost weight."

"Is there any cure, Doctor Dukow?" the girl's mother asked. She looked disturbed, but not panicked, good. The father was staring at her and Ellen, as if unsure of what to make of the situation.

"Not yet," Ellen told her. "She's going to have to eat a strict gluten-free diet, and there will be changes you'll have to make to your kitchen to make sure she isn't accidentally exposed. Doctors are working on a cure, but...." There was research, she recalled vaguely, to at least make people with the condition able to have some gluten, but she wasn't sure it had gotten far. 

Immune systems were tricky things. They were absolutely necessary, as Paul Forrester had proven so long ago, but like every part of the human body, they could get messed up.

"I see a lot of gluten-free labels at the stores," the father said, nodding at that. They'd seemed at least relieved that it wasn't something worse, like cancer, but were still processing the information. "Sounds like it might not be... too bad."

Ellen had seen a lot of them too, so she nodded. "You'll want to talk to a dietician," she said. She'd diagnosed the disease, but as much as she would have liked to, she couldn't do much about it. It was up to the parents to make sure their daughter didn't eat things she couldn't. Doctors couldn't cure everything, after all. Sometimes she had to remind herself of that. "I can make a referral."

"Right." The mother tapped at her smartphone, probably to start reading up on her daughter's ailment. Ellen could remember the days when there was no such thing as the Internet in everybody's daily lives, and wondered if this younger woman remembered it at all. "Will they call?"

"I can ask them to." She gave them a smile, though it was shallow and forced. "Any questions?"

Neither of them had any. She ushered them out, finished typing the information into the computer, and got ready for her next patient.


End file.
